Tag: Energy

Turkey is getting a giant helper to avoid last December’s gas shortages.

The world’s biggest specialized vessel to import liquefied natural gas, a cheaper and quicker solution than a land-based facility, is on its way to help with imports of the fuel mainly used for heating and power generation. The MOL FSRU Challenger, as long as the Eiffel Tower, is expected to arrive from South Korea this month and start by year-end.

Last winter, a cold snap gripped the whole region, including Iran, where Turkey gets some of its gas from. That meant the nation couldn’t get hold of enough fuel to meet its booming gas demand and the grid asked private power plants to reduce fuel demand by as much as 90 percent.

A first floating storage and regasification unit, the Neptune, arrived in December to complement two onshore terminals at Aliaga and Marmara Ereglisi.

“We expect Turkey to import more than last winter, and last winter they increased demand,” said Gyorgy Vargha, chief executive officer of MET International AG, a Zug, Switzerland-based energy trader that trades LNG mainly in southern Europe. “It is a growing market.”

Turkey was the fastest-growing market for LNG imports after China, South Korea and Japan in the first half of the year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which forecasts uneven demand in the nation through 2030.

The 345-meter (1,132 feet) tanker can store 263,000 cubic meters of LNG, enough to cover more than a day’s gas demand in Turkey. It was sailing westward, just south of India as of Tuesday.

The ship can also export the fuel for use in neighboring regions, according to Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd., the owner and operator of the vessel.

State gas grid operator Botas Boru Hatlari Ile Petrol Tasima AS signed the lease agreement for the vessel, which will be located at Dortyol near the Syrian border.

SolarCity is talking up the look and longevity of solar roofing but potential costs pose questions about whether it can succeed where others have failed

Elon Musks solar company has its sights set on replacing 5m rooftops in the US with traditional roofing materials integrated with solar cell technology.

SolarCitys plans, announced last month, to develop traditional roofs made entirely from solar panels are part of a goal to make sustainable homes more aesthetically appealing, convenient, and ultimately affordable to the average homeowner. Its betting that people who need to replace their roofs will be attracted to the companys solar cell option because it wont require additional work or dramatically alter the look of the home.

In an August conference call with investors, company chairman Elon Musk said people are forced to postpone solar adoption when they know a roof replacement is imminent and that there is a huge market segment that is currently inaccessible to SolarCity. He added that the companys solar cell roofing looks way better and lasts far longer than a normal roof.

By integrating a SolarCity roof with Tesla battery packs, it believes those homes could operate on solar power 24-hours a day. The lingering question, however, is whether mainstream homeowners will be able to afford that initial investment.

A SolarCity representative was tightlipped on costs, saying they could not share details about the product at this time.

Some industry players doubt the product can be affordable to most homeowners. Previous versions of photovoltaic roofs also called solar shingles have cost up to a third than traditional solar panels, were less efficient, and were far more pricey to install.

What [the company is] talking about is a paradigm shift, not just a small leap, says Scott Franklin, owner of Lumos Solar, which specialises in solar panel architecture and design. SolarCity is known for being a low-cost, fast installer. Now theyre talking about developing an entirely new product and becoming roofers? In terms of cost, theyre going from selling solar leases to telling somebody they have to replace an entire roof. Thats a dramatic cost difference.

In 2009, US multinational Dow Chemical began developing solar shingles. Yet at a price of more than $20,000 per roof, the technology was not commercially viable and Dow discontinued the product in June 2016.

Thatll be the battle the cost factor, says Bill Ellard, an economist for the American Solar Energy Society. But if SolarCity works with some of the major homebuilders and they can invent their own systems, I think theres a play there.

But even if it succeeds in creating an affordable product, can SolarCity match the success of other eco-home innovations?

Smart home devices such as Googles Nest thermostat are more affordable, and going down in cost each year. Thermostats and energy monitoring systems have taken off in recent years in part because they allow homeowners to cut energy use without changing their behaviour.

Googles Nest thermostat. Photograph: George Frey/Getty Images

Homeowners dont want to think about efficiency; they want it just taken care of, says John Quale, a sustainable home design professor at the University of New Mexico. We are not great about closing curtains or opening windows when we should. Thats why technologies that do things for us are so appealing.

Brian Abramson, cofounder of sustainable homebuilder Method Homes in Seattle, Washington, says smart home technology is becoming more mainstream, lower cost, and accessible. We probably do Nest thermostats and basic lighting control on 80% of our houses; a couple of years ago there werent any smart thermostats, and lighting control was only in 20% of our homes.

Success in the residential solar market, by contrast, is heavily dependent on friendly government policies, a model that has proved challenging when tax incentives threaten to expire, or when monopoly utility companies are allowed to change the way they reimburse solar panel owners for energy put into the grid.

By entering the home roofing market, SolarCity is also tacitly acknowledging that aesthetic concerns also hinder solar panel adoption.

Aesthetics are a big deal, says Franklin. The first wave of solar adoption was driven by economics or environmental concerns. Now people are already past the I think its a good idea phase. They want to do it, but it has to look good and add to the value of a home rather than just be a bolted on addition.

If you look at the aspirations of Tesla and SolarCity, they have huge potential. Elon Musk is really talking about getting to the masses, and those companies could very well be an important driver in reducing costs, he says.

The conventional glass panel arrays have come down substantially in cost in the last five years and theres no reason to think these roofing materials couldnt fall into that as well.

SolarCity is talking up the look and longevity of solar roofing but potential costs pose questions about whether it can succeed where others have failed

Elon Musks solar company has its sights set on replacing 5m rooftops in the US with traditional roofing materials integrated with solar cell technology.

SolarCitys plans, announced last month, to develop traditional roofs made entirely from solar panels are part of a goal to make sustainable homes more aesthetically appealing, convenient, and ultimately affordable to the average homeowner. Its betting that people who need to replace their roofs will be attracted to the companys solar cell option because it wont require additional work or dramatically alter the look of the home.

In an August conference call with investors, company chairman Elon Musk said people are forced to postpone solar adoption when they know a roof replacement is imminent and that there is a huge market segment that is currently inaccessible to SolarCity. He added that the companys solar cell roofing looks way better and lasts far longer than a normal roof.

By integrating a SolarCity roof with Tesla battery packs, it believes those homes could operate on solar power 24-hours a day. The lingering question, however, is whether mainstream homeowners will be able to afford that initial investment.

A SolarCity representative was tightlipped on costs, saying they could not share details about the product at this time.

Some industry players doubt the product can be affordable to most homeowners. Previous versions of photovoltaic roofs also called solar shingles have cost up to a third than traditional solar panels, were less efficient, and were far more pricey to install.

What [the company is] talking about is a paradigm shift, not just a small leap, says Scott Franklin, owner of Lumos Solar, which specialises in solar panel architecture and design. SolarCity is known for being a low-cost, fast installer. Now theyre talking about developing an entirely new product and becoming roofers? In terms of cost, theyre going from selling solar leases to telling somebody they have to replace an entire roof. Thats a dramatic cost difference.

In 2009, US multinational Dow Chemical began developing solar shingles. Yet at a price of more than $20,000 per roof, the technology was not commercially viable and Dow discontinued the product in June 2016.

Thatll be the battle the cost factor, says Bill Ellard, an economist for the American Solar Energy Society. But if SolarCity works with some of the major homebuilders and they can invent their own systems, I think theres a play there.

But even if it succeeds in creating an affordable product, can SolarCity match the success of other eco-home innovations?

Smart home devices such as Googles Nest thermostat are more affordable, and going down in cost each year. Thermostats and energy monitoring systems have taken off in recent years in part because they allow homeowners to cut energy use without changing their behaviour.

Googles Nest thermostat. Photograph: George Frey/Getty Images

Homeowners dont want to think about efficiency; they want it just taken care of, says John Quale, a sustainable home design professor at the University of New Mexico. We are not great about closing curtains or opening windows when we should. Thats why technologies that do things for us are so appealing.

Brian Abramson, cofounder of sustainable homebuilder Method Homes in Seattle, Washington, says smart home technology is becoming more mainstream, lower cost, and accessible. We probably do Nest thermostats and basic lighting control on 80% of our houses; a couple of years ago there werent any smart thermostats, and lighting control was only in 20% of our homes.

Success in the residential solar market, by contrast, is heavily dependent on friendly government policies, a model that has proved challenging when tax incentives threaten to expire, or when monopoly utility companies are allowed to change the way they reimburse solar panel owners for energy put into the grid.

By entering the home roofing market, SolarCity is also tacitly acknowledging that aesthetic concerns also hinder solar panel adoption.

Aesthetics are a big deal, says Franklin. The first wave of solar adoption was driven by economics or environmental concerns. Now people are already past the I think its a good idea phase. They want to do it, but it has to look good and add to the value of a home rather than just be a bolted on addition.

If you look at the aspirations of Tesla and SolarCity, they have huge potential. Elon Musk is really talking about getting to the masses, and those companies could very well be an important driver in reducing costs, he says.

The conventional glass panel arrays have come down substantially in cost in the last five years and theres no reason to think these roofing materials couldnt fall into that as well.

SolarCity is talking up the look and longevity of solar roofing but potential costs pose questions about whether it can succeed where others have failed

Elon Musks solar company has its sights set on replacing 5m rooftops in the US with traditional roofing materials integrated with solar cell technology.

SolarCitys plans, announced last month, to develop traditional roofs made entirely from solar panels are part of a goal to make sustainable homes more aesthetically appealing, convenient, and ultimately affordable to the average homeowner. Its betting that people who need to replace their roofs will be attracted to the companys solar cell option because it wont require additional work or dramatically alter the look of the home.

In an August conference call with investors, company chairman Elon Musk said people are forced to postpone solar adoption when they know a roof replacement is imminent and that there is a huge market segment that is currently inaccessible to SolarCity. He added that the companys solar cell roofing looks way better and lasts far longer than a normal roof.

By integrating a SolarCity roof with Tesla battery packs, it believes those homes could operate on solar power 24-hours a day. The lingering question, however, is whether mainstream homeowners will be able to afford that initial investment.

A SolarCity representative was tightlipped on costs, saying they could not share details about the product at this time.

Some industry players doubt the product can be affordable to most homeowners. Previous versions of photovoltaic roofs also called solar shingles have cost up to a third than traditional solar panels, were less efficient, and were far more pricey to install.

What [the company is] talking about is a paradigm shift, not just a small leap, says Scott Franklin, owner of Lumos Solar, which specialises in solar panel architecture and design. SolarCity is known for being a low-cost, fast installer. Now theyre talking about developing an entirely new product and becoming roofers? In terms of cost, theyre going from selling solar leases to telling somebody they have to replace an entire roof. Thats a dramatic cost difference.

In 2009, US multinational Dow Chemical began developing solar shingles. Yet at a price of more than $20,000 per roof, the technology was not commercially viable and Dow discontinued the product in June 2016.

Thatll be the battle the cost factor, says Bill Ellard, an economist for the American Solar Energy Society. But if SolarCity works with some of the major homebuilders and they can invent their own systems, I think theres a play there.

But even if it succeeds in creating an affordable product, can SolarCity match the success of other eco-home innovations?

Smart home devices such as Googles Nest thermostat are more affordable, and going down in cost each year. Thermostats and energy monitoring systems have taken off in recent years in part because they allow homeowners to cut energy use without changing their behaviour.

Googles Nest thermostat. Photograph: George Frey/Getty Images

Homeowners dont want to think about efficiency; they want it just taken care of, says John Quale, a sustainable home design professor at the University of New Mexico. We are not great about closing curtains or opening windows when we should. Thats why technologies that do things for us are so appealing.

Brian Abramson, cofounder of sustainable homebuilder Method Homes in Seattle, Washington, says smart home technology is becoming more mainstream, lower cost, and accessible. We probably do Nest thermostats and basic lighting control on 80% of our houses; a couple of years ago there werent any smart thermostats, and lighting control was only in 20% of our homes.

Success in the residential solar market, by contrast, is heavily dependent on friendly government policies, a model that has proved challenging when tax incentives threaten to expire, or when monopoly utility companies are allowed to change the way they reimburse solar panel owners for energy put into the grid.

By entering the home roofing market, SolarCity is also tacitly acknowledging that aesthetic concerns also hinder solar panel adoption.

Aesthetics are a big deal, says Franklin. The first wave of solar adoption was driven by economics or environmental concerns. Now people are already past the I think its a good idea phase. They want to do it, but it has to look good and add to the value of a home rather than just be a bolted on addition.

If you look at the aspirations of Tesla and SolarCity, they have huge potential. Elon Musk is really talking about getting to the masses, and those companies could very well be an important driver in reducing costs, he says.

The conventional glass panel arrays have come down substantially in cost in the last five years and theres no reason to think these roofing materials couldnt fall into that as well.

Unlike other arrangements, if we dont get this right, business stops. There will be no trade. If we cant arrive at safeguards and other principles that allow compliance [with international nuclear standards] to be demonstrated, no nuclear trade will be able to continue.

Asked by the chair of the Commons business, energy and industrial strategy select committee if that would see reactors switching off, he said: Ultimately, when their fuels runs out, yes. Cowen said that in his view there was no legal requirement for the UK to leave Euratom because of Brexit: Its a political issue, not a legal issue.

The UK nuclear industry would be crippled if new nuclear cooperation deals are not agreed within two years, a former government adviser told the committee.

There is a plethora of international agreements that would have to be struck that almost mirror those in place with Euratom, before we moved not just material but intellectual property, services, anything in the nuclear sector. We would be crippled without other things in place, said Dame Sue Ion, chair of the Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board, which was established by the government in 2013.

She said movement of the industrys best intellectual talent was made easier by the UKs membership of Euratom.

The government said it was working on alternative arrangements to Euratom. Describing the notification of withdrawal as a regrettable necessity when article 50 is triggered, energy minister Jesse Norman said that the UK saw clear routes outside of Euratom to address issues such as the trade of nuclear materials.

We take this extremely seriously and are devoting serious resources [to looking at new arrangements], he told the Lords science and technology committee on Tuesday.

Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, said there was a lot to be done to put in place transitional measures replacing Euratom.

What were collectively warning about is the potential for there to be a very hard two-year period during which there are lots of other things the government has to deal with, that could leave it in a position where some of these things arent in place, he said. Greatrex said one possible option was an associate membership of Euratom.

Over the weekend, the GMB union called on ministers to reconsider their foolhardy rush to leave the treaty, claiming it could endanger the UKs entire nuclear future.

But the Office for Nuclear Regulation argued there could even be be some positives to leaving Euratom, such as a reduction in bureaucracy. If we relinquish Euratom there would be reduced burden from not having to comply with directives, said David Senior, an ONR executive.

The battery might be the least sexy piece of technology ever invented. The lack of glamour is especially conspicuous on the lower floors of MITs materials science department, where one lab devoted to building and testing the next world-changing energy storage device could easily be mistaken for a storage closet.

At the back of the cramped room, Donald Sadoway, a silver-haired electrochemist in a trim black-striped suit and expensive-looking shoes, rummages through a plastic tub of parts like a kid in search of a particular Lego. He sets a pair of objects on the table, each about the size and shape of a can of soup with all the inherent drama of a paperweight.

No wonder its so hard to get anyone excited about batteries. But these paperweightser, battery cellscould be the technology that revolutionizes our energy system.

Because batteries arent just boring. Frankly, they kinda suck. At best, the batteries that power our daily lives are merely invisibleeasily drained reservoirs of power packed into smartphones and computers and cars. At worst, they are expensive, heavy, combustible, complicated to dispose of properly, and prone to dying in the cold or oozing corrosive fluid. Even as the devices they power become slimmer and smarter, batteries are still waiting for their next upgrade. Computer processors famously double their capacity every two years; batteries may scrounge only a few percentage points of improvement in the same amount of time.

Early prototypes of Sadoways battery cell.Grist/Amelia Urry

Nevertheless, the future will be battery-powered. It has to be. From electric cars to industrial-scale solar farms, batteries are the key to a cleaner, more efficient energy systemand the sooner we get there, the sooner we can stop contributing to potentially catastrophic climate change.

But the batteries weve gotmostly lithium-ionarent good enough. Theres been some progress: The cost of storing energy has fallen by half over the last five years, and big companies are increasingly making marquee investments in the technology, like Teslas gigafactory. But in terms of wholesale economic transformation, lithium-ion batteries remain too expensive. They are powerful in our devices, but when you scale them up they are liable to overheat and even, occasionally, explode.

Perhaps the biggest problem with lithium-ion batteries is that they wear out. Think of your phone battery after its spent a few years draining to 1 percent then charging back up to 100. That kind of deep discharge and recharge takes a physical toll and damages a batterys performance over time.

So were overdue for a brand new battery, and researchers around the world are racing to give us one, with competing approaches and technologies vying for top spot. Some of their ideas are like nothing weve ever plugged into the gridstill not sexy, exactly, but definitely surprising. Liquid batteries. Batteries of molten metal that run as hot as a car engine. Batteries whose secret ingredient is saltwater.

Its all part of a brand new space raceif less flashy than, you know, outer space.

Grist/Amelia Bates

Just Add Batteries

There are a few things you want in a good battery, but two are essential: It needs to be reliable, and it needs to be cheap.

The biggest problem is still cost, says Eric Rohlfing, deputy director of technology for ARPA-E, a division of the Department of Energy that identifies and funds cutting-edge research and development. A 2012 study in Nature found that the average American would only be willing to pay about $13 more each month to ensure that the entire U.S. electrical supply ran on renewables. So batteries cant add much to electrical bills.

For utilities, that means providing grid-level energy storage that would cost them less than $100 per kilowatt hour. Since it was established by President Obama in 2009, ARPA-E has put $85 million toward developing new batteries that can meet that goal.

People called us crazy, says Rohlfing. That number was absurdly low for an industry that hadnt yet seen the near side of $700 per kilowatt hours when they started, according to one study of electric vehicle batteries published in Nature. Now, though still unattained, $100 per kWh is the standard target across the industry, Rohlfing says. Get below that, it seems, and you can not only competeyou can win.

And heres what a better battery stands to win: a cleaner, more reliable power system, which doesnt rely on fossil fuels and is more robust to boot.

Every time you flip a light switch, you tap into a gigantic invisible web, the electrical grid. Somewhere, at the other end of the high-voltage transmission lines carrying power to your house, theres a power plant (likely burning coal or, increasingly, natural gas) churning out electricity to replace the electrons that you and everyone else are draining at that moment.

The amount of power in our grid at any one time is carefully maintainedtoo much or too little and things start to break. Grid operators make careful observations and predictions to determine how much electricity power plants should produce, minute by minute, hour by hour. But sometimes theyre wrong, and a plant has to power up in a hurry to make up the difference.

Lucky for us, its a big, interconnected system, so we rarely notice changes in the quality or quantity of electricity. Imagine the difference between stepping into a bucket of water versus stepping into the ocean. In a small system, any change in the balance between supply and demand is obvious the bucket overflows. But because the grid is so bigocean-likefluctuations are usually imperceptible. Only when something goes very wrong do we notice, because the lights go out.

Renewable energy is less obedient than a coal- or gas-fired power plantyou cant just fire up a solar farm if demand spikes suddenly. Solar power peaks during the day, varies as clouds move across the sun, and disappears at night, while wind power is even less predictable. Too much of that kind of intermittency on the grid could make it more difficult to balance supply and demand, which could lead to more blackouts.

Storing energy is a safety valve. If you could dump extra energy somewhere, then draw from it when supply gets low again, you can power a whole lot more stuff with renewable energy, even when the sun isnt shining and the wind isnt blowing. Whats more, the grid itself becomes more stable and efficient, as batteries would allow communities and regions to manage their own power supply. Our aging and overtaxed power infrastructure would go a lot further. Instead of installing new transmission lines in places where existing lines are near capacity, you could draw power during off-peak times and stash it in batteries until you need it.

Just like that, the bucket can behave a lot more like the ocean. That would meanat least in theorymore distributed power generation and storage, more renewables, and less reliance on giant fossil-fueled power plants.

So thats why this battery thing is kind of A Big Deal.

Grist/Amelia Urry

Heating Up

A battery will do for the electricity supply chain what refrigeration did to our food supply chain, Sadoway says from his office in MIT, a good deal more spacious than the battery lab.

Those canisters he showed me were early prototypes of cells for a liquid metal battery he started researching a decade ago.

I started working on batteries just because I was crazy about cars, Sadoway tells me. (His desktop background is a vintage sports car he sold a few years ago. He keeps the picture around the way one would memorialize a family pet.) In 2005, he took a test drive in an early Ford electric vehicle and fell in love. I realized the only reason we dont have electric cars is because we dont have batteries.

So Sadoway started thinking. He had some experience with the process of refining aluminum, and he wondered if that could be a model for a new, unorthodox kind of battery. Aluminum smelting is a dirt-cheap, energy-intensive process by which purified metal is boiled out of ore. But if that one-way process could be doubled up and looped back on itself, maybe the huge amount of energy fed into the molten metal could be stored there.

In some ways, thats insanethe molten battery would have to run around of 880 degrees F, only slightly cooler than the combustion chamber of a car engine. But its also a bizarrely simple concept, at least to an electrochemist. It turns out assembling a cell of a liquid metal battery cell is as easy as dropping a plug of metal, made up of two alloys of different densities, into a vessel and pouring some salt on top. When the cell is powered up, the two metals melt and divide into two layers automatically, like salad oil floating on vinegar. The molten salt forms a layer between them, conducting electrons back and forth.

But even with a promising start, developing a new battery is a glacially slow process, Sadoway says. Early funding from ARPA-E and the French oil giant Total helped him get the idea off the ground, but sustaining research for the years needed to build any brand new technology is expensive. Venture capitalists are shy about drawn-out engineering projects when there are so many software startups promising fast profits.

In any capital-intensive industry, industry will stand in the way of innovation, Sadoway says. Existing battery companies have too much invested in the status quo to be much help, he says. Lithium-ion came from outside the established battery industry of its time, he points out; the next battery will have to do the same.

The molten metal battery has long since moved out of the basement lab. In 2010, Sadoway started the battery company Ambri with several of his former students, then moved HQ into a manufacturing facility 30 miles west of Cambridge to the town of Marlborough. Now, Ambri employs about 40 people and is busy building prototype battery packs out of hundreds of the molten metal cells.

Sadoway says Ambri is less than a year away from deploying its first commercial models. All signs have been hopeful so far, he says. At the manufacturing facility, some test cells have been up and running for almost four years without showing any signs of wear and tear. Getting the assembled battery packs, each consisting of 432 individual cells, to work was trickier. But after ironing out some pesky issues with the heat seals, the battery packs can reach a self-sustaining operating temperature, hot enough to charge and discharge without any extra energy input. Now Ambri is in the middle of raising another round of funding, enough to reach market-ready production mode.

On my way out the door, I say that, for all the difficulty and delay, it seems like this battery could really be close. I hope so, Sadoway says, looking almost wistful. Maybe this is it. Id like to see that.

Grist/Amelia Bates

A Crowded Field

The molten metal battery isnt the only moonshot battery. Its not even the obvious front-runner. Other technologies are pushing ahead, quietly and without fanfare, from iron flow batteries to zinc- and lithium-air varieties.

Like Sadoways project, many of these untested technologies are funded initially by grants from ARPA-E. These are very early stage, high-risk technologies, says Rohlfing, the agencys deputy director. We take a lot of shots on goal.

One especially promising contender in the better battery battle is the Pittsburgh-based company Aquion, whose founder, Carnegie Mellon professor Jay Whitacre, set out in 2008 to design the cheapest, most reliable battery you could make.

The result is something colloquially called a saltwater battery. It looks, more or less, like a Rubbermaid bin full of seawater. All of the materials in the Aquion batteries are abundant and easily obtained elements, from salt to stainless steel to cotton. Whats more, none of those materials carry the risks of a lithium-ion battery.

Its also stupidly easy to assemble. Our main piece of manufacturing assembly equipment comes out of the food packaging industry, Maroon says. Its a simple pick-and-place robot that youd find at Nabisco, putting crackers inside of blister packs.

Aquion batteries have been on the market for nearly three years, installed in both homes and utility-scale facilities. Overall, Aquion has 35 megawatt hours of storage deployed around the world in 250 different installations. One in Hawaii has been up and running for two years; last year, the battery-plus-solar system powered several buildings for six months without ever falling back on a diesel generator.

We need to get more of these things out into the field, says Rohlfing. Right now, if Im a utility or a grid operator and I want to buy storage, I want to buy something that comes with a 20-year warranty. The technologies were talking about arent at that stage yet.

But theyre getting close. Another ARPA-E-funded project, Energy Storage Systems, or ESS, announced last November that it would install one of its iron-flow batteries as part of an Army Corps of Engineers microgrid experiment on a military base in Missouri. ESS has also installed batteries to help power an off-grid organic winery in Napa Valleyfor that matter, so has Aquion. As more and more of these one-off experiments prove successfuland more of these new kinds of batteries prove their worththe possibility of a battery-powered energy system comes a little closer.

But will batteries ever be, well, cool? Thats a harder question. Aquions Matt Maroon has been working in the field since 2002, soon after he left college. At conferences, Maroon was often the youngest person in the room by 30 years. He was sure he wouldnt be a battery guy for his whole career.

Fifteen years later, hes still a battery guybut hes no longer the youngest person in the room. More students are starting to get involved with batteries, and people are starting to take notice. Its still not as a cool as working at Apple, he says. But I think people recognize its importance and that kind of makes it cool.

Or I hope so, he laughs. Ive got a 9-year-old daughter. So Id like to work on something that she thinks is cool someday. Thats my ultimate goal.